


Two Postcards Written in Snowflake, Arizona

by proxydialogue



Series: The In-between Verse [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, Meta, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 16:15:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proxydialogue/pseuds/proxydialogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it’s hard to judge a mistake as good or bad. But he’s God, infallible n’all, so he’s less used to having to make that distinction than most people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Postcards Written in Snowflake, Arizona

**Author's Note:**

> From this point forward the series requires foreknowledge of the previous installments. (The first three sort of stand alone, but starting with this installement they have a direction.)

In Snowflake, Arizona he is reminded that Irony does not discriminate. 

A farmer (named Willis, who reminds Chuck in small ways of the gardener) finds him wandering without permission through his corn maze and asks, with a large pair of sheers in his hand: 

“You come here to get lost?” He snips away an errant stalk that had been waving across the path like a disembodied arm. Chuck looks at the farmer, surprised by him, and tries to remember if he had planned this weeks ago and forgotten? 

“Maybe,” he answers. 

“Maze don’t open for weeks yet,” the farmer informs him. “Who are you?” 

“Chuck,” says Chuck. Who hasn’t been asked to provide a name in a long time. 

“You write, Chuck?” 

Chuck is clutching his pen in one hand and three postcards in the other. Yes, he writes. The farmer pushes past him and continues through the maze, his sheers raised, his head moving back and forth. His boots leave deep impressions in the mud. His brown eyes, glancing back over his shoulder, leave deep impressions in Chuck. The corn stalks are beginning to turn yellow, dying slowly as the season changes. The middle aged man is humming. 

It is a moment of in-between. Chuck invented them so he recognizes it right away. 

“Beer, Chuck?” the farmer offers. Why not? Chuck follows him out of the maze. Because he’s watching the farmer’s shoulders he forgets to pay attention and one of the postcards slips from his fingers and lands in the mud. He steps on it by accident; snaps its potential out of existence. Damn. He picks it up and shakes it off, but it’s ruined. 

The farmer leads him to the wooden porch of an old farm house where there are absolutely no chairs. But the steps are rather fine, so Chuck sits on those. The farmer vanishes through the door to get the beer. Chuck lays his two remaining postcards on the floor of the porch and wipes his fingers clean on his shirt. He takes a deep breath through his nose and hopes he has enough room. 

Then he starts to write. Or rather, he picks up his pen and manages the first two letters of Dean Winchester’s name before he’s interrupted by the screen door banging open and the earthquake of the famer’s boots on the boards of the porch. A cold bottle, wet, is handed over to him and the farmer sits down with a sigh beside him. 

Chuck watches as the farmer twists the cap off his bottle. It looks like the first crash of two storm fronts coming together. The hiss that follows as the air escapes is like the last exhale of a man who has no idea he’s about to die. And the sloshing of the beer as the farmer lifts it to his lips and tips his head back is the gathering rush of a new waterfall. 

The farmer’s bottle cap blows off the porch and across the yard in a sudden wind until it is trapped under the lip of an overturned bucket. The smell of burnt toast is wafting over from the open window of the house next door where the neighbor is burning her casserole. And when Chuck digs his heel into the stones of the driveway, a beetle scurries to escape the suddenly troubled gravel. 

Chuck takes several long drinks of his beer. 

He crosses out the “D” and the “e” and begins again. 

 

 

Sam and Dean are sitting on either side of a wobbly hotel table. It feels like they’ve been sitting on either side of this same table for their whole lives (because in a way they have). Dean is staring out the window, ignoring his newspaper completely, and munching slowly on cold French Fries. Sam is staring at the screen saver on his computer while he tries to pick a piece of cabbage out of his teeth with his tongue. Dean’s elbows keep the table tipped in his direction, in thirty seconds, when he shifts and leans back in his chair, it will cause the table to rock and Sam to squawk when his computer nearly slides to its demise. 

It is not a particularly sturdy table. Nor a particularly _good_ table, as far as tables go. 

But the silhouettes of the boys, almost knee to knee, balance the room and erase the appearance of instability. 

 

Castiel is standing alone on a sidewalk on an almost empty street in New Hampshire while the little unnamed diner across the street closes down. He glances over through the window, casually, when the fluid movements of the waitress catch his eye. She is smiling at three postcards, pinned one after the other horizontally across the wall. They are filled so tight with writing there is hardly room for the thumbtacks. 

He can’t see what the writing says, but it makes him lonely. 

He goes to see Dean and Sam. 

 

When the breeze brushes through the motel room Dean leans back in his chair to look over and smile at Cas. Sam’s laptop bumps and slides off the end of the table and both brothers lurch for it before it hits the ground. They catch it at the same time. 

Dean grins at Sam, reflexive and easy, thinking that they haven’t been this in step with each other since dad died. Cas watches Dean’s grin like it’s a sunset. 

It’s another moment of— 

No. This one significant. It’s a catalyst. 

Sam laughs in relief and pulls his computer into his lap. Dean eats another French fry. Castiel tries to untangle his insides. 

It’s a beginning like— 

 

 

He’s out of room. That’s it. And the words are all wrong, all unplanned. They spider across the page, different sized letters and forgotten punctuation marks. Chuck jams his pen in his pocket and drinks down the last of his beer. 

The farmer offers him another one. He takes it. He drinks it. 

Fuck, but he’s done it now. 

He gets tipsy with the farmer and forgets where he is. He listens to the man’s stories and sort of belatedly feels like an asshole for the whole Babel business.


End file.
